Farside (15 page)

They were sitting next to each other at a small round table in a corner of Kristine Cardenas’s nanotechnology lab. An assistant had carried in a tea tray, complete with a small platter of scones. Now, as they sipped from the thin ceramic cups, Cardenas looked quite normal, ordinary: except that she appeared decades younger than the age given for her in the bionets. Young, healthy—and teeming with virus-sized machines crawling through her body.

Again Halleck fought down the urge to shudder.

“Are you all right?” Cardenas asked her.

Halleck blinked at the woman. “Yes. Of course. Why do you ask?”

Cardenas looked concerned. “You seemed to drift out of the conversation … as if your mind was wandering.”

“Sorry,” said Halleck. “I was merely thinking about how different things are here from the way they are on Earth.”

Her expression hardening, Cardenas said, “Yes, they are, aren’t they?”

“I understand that you’re not allowed back to Earth.”

“Not unless I flush my body of the nanos in it.”

Halleck’s breath caught in her throat. “Then it’s true. You’re filled with them.”

Smiling bitterly, Cardenas replied, “You don’t have to be worried. They won’t come out and infect you.”

“I didn’t think … that is, I mean…”

“I know,” said Cardenas. “All your life you’ve been told that nanomachines are dangerous—”

“Well, aren’t they?” Halleck challenged.

“So is a rock,” Cardenas snapped. “You can use a rock to smash someone’s skull, can’t you? So is penicillin dangerous, if you put too much of it into your veins. So is water dangerous, if you fill your lungs with it.”

Halleck lowered her eyes. “I understand. It’s just … well, please give me a little time to get used to it.”

With an expression that was almost contemptuous, Cardenas said, “You’re frightened of nanomachines, yet you’re here to see if nanotechnology can help you.”

Halleck nodded.

“Isn’t that just the tiniest bit contradictory?” Cardenas asked.

Now Halleck allowed herself a minimal smile. “There’s an old legend about the great moguls of Hollywood, back when movies were still flat, two-dimensional. Every one of those studio heads is alleged to have told his assistants, ‘Never let that bastard back on this lot again—unless we need him!’”

Cardenas eased back in her chair and broke into a chuckle. “You need nanotech.”

“I believe I do.”

“Tell me about it.”

Half an hour later Cardenas didn’t seem as hostile as she’d been earlier.

“Yes,” she was saying, “we can build your mirror segments in space. The nanos are machines, they don’t need air or gravity. They’ll work perfectly well in space.”

“We’ll have to bring the raw materials up from the ground,” said Halleck.

“Get the raw materials from Selene. That’s what Uhlrich is doing, over at Farside. It’s more than twenty times cheaper launching cargo into space from here than from Earth.”

“The lower gravity, of course,” Halleck murmured.

“And the Moon’s surface is airless. We launch cargo with an electric catapult. Much cheaper than rockets.”

“Then you can do it?”

Cardenas hesitated a fraction of a heartbeat. “We’re already committed to producing mirrors for Farside.”

“Ah. Professor Uhlrich.”

“Yes.”

“Couldn’t you take on my project as well? I can finance whatever expansion you’d have to make in your lab, your staff. Whatever. Within reason, of course.”

Cardenas reached for her cup of cooling tea and sipped at it, obviously thinking about what she should answer. At last she said, “It won’t take much of an expansion here, actually. I can produce the nanos for you once you get your specifications for the mirror segments to me. The rest of the project is up to you.”

It was Halleck’s turn to do some thinking. “I’d need to have a sample built and tested before we start building the actual segments in space.”

“That’s reasonable.”

“Can you start on that right away?”

“In a few weeks,” Cardenas answered.

“A few weeks?”

“Uhlrich’s in line ahead of you.”

“Oh,” said Halleck. “Of course. I see.”

Looking slightly puzzled, Cardenas said, “I got the impression that you and the professor were in competition. A race.”

“Oh, he’s in a race. I’m not. But he doesn’t believe me when I tell him so. He’s hell-bent to get imagery of New Earth before anyone else does. He’s slavering for the Nobel Prize.”

“Aren’t you?”

“The Nobel Prize?” Halleck laughed. “I’m not a scientist. I’m not eligible. I’m just a poor little girl from Sydney.”

DOSSIER: ANITA MARIE HALLECK

She was born in the Outback, the only child of a sheep rancher and his schoolmistress wife. Anita Marie was barely three when the abrupt greenhouse climate shift struck Australia, flooding the coastal cities while parching the arid Outback worse than ever. One of her earliest memories was of her father’s fields littered with scruffy, bone-thin sheep dead and dying of thirst in the brittle brown grass while the merciless wind blew gray dust over their bodies.

The little family moved to Sydney, which was also dying—of too much water. Together with nearly a million other refugees, they lived in one of the tent cities that dotted the hills above Sydney’s flooded downtown. By the time she was ten, Anita Marie was contributing to the family’s finances by scuba diving among the city’s drowned high-rise towers, fetching souvenirs for tourists who cooed over the fearless little girl who swam like a dolphin.

By the time she was sixteen she was orphaned, her mother killed in one of the horrific tropical cyclones that blew in from the Tasman Sea and tore the refugees’ tents to tatters, her father slain soon afterward in a drunken fight. Anita quickly learned that she could obtain protection, and even kindness, by using her hard, lively intelligence and her lithe, very feminine body.

She climbed through a succession of lovers, adroitly avoiding the pitfalls of other girls who fell in love too easily or succumbed to the need for drugs or other palliatives. She stayed clean and sober, and rose to a comfortable and almost secure life.

Then she met Morgan McClintock. He was a generation older than she, incredibly wealthy, and attracted to her from the moment they met—at a party celebrating his fiftieth birthday. Within a week Anita dumped the hard-muscled construction engineer she’d been living with and moved into the McClintock mansion.

Morgan McClintock gave her everything: sophistication, luxury, education, social contacts, even employment in one of the corporations he controlled, McClintock Securities Ltd. Everything except marriage. After living as a widower for years, the thought of marrying this slim young mistress of his never entered his mind. And Anita never pressed him on the subject. She knew that Morgan did not truly love her, not in the starry-eyed way of romantic fantasy. She didn’t care. She had fallen truly in love with Morgan McClintock.

She became an astute businesswoman and an accepted part of his international social set. Eventually he wangled a position for her on the governing board of the International Astronautical Authority. She had to resign from McClintock Securities, but Morgan was delighted with her new situation, expecting her influence to send lucrative IAA projects to his web of interconnecting corporations.

When she began to show some independence, and failed to follow his demands for contract favors, a rift began to grow between them. She begged him to consider her obligation: “I can’t throw contracts your way, Morgan, I simply can’t. It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be ethical.”

“Ethics be damned,” he growled. “This is business.”

Gradually Anita realized that security, even love, were not enough for her. She wanted to be somebody. On her own, of herself. She wanted to be Anita Marie, not Morgan McClintock’s mistress, not a woman who was known by the man she slept with, not even a woman who was known by her job or career. Herself. For herself and by herself.

The IAA’s work was interesting, in a cerebral, non-visceral way. But directing that work, making decisions that influenced giant corporations, decisions that moved stock markets around the world and affected thousands of men and women, agreeing to fund
this
project and withholding support from
that
one: that was power, and Anita enjoyed wielding it.

Morgan McClintock grew increasingly unhappy with her increasing independence. They argued, more and more heatedly. The end came when he angrily accused her of sleeping with Dan Randolph, the womanizing founder of Astro Manufacturing, and handing juicy deals to Astro. Furious, Morgan accused her of stabbing him in the back and slapped her face. Then he threw her out, actually emptying her closets and hurling her clothing out the window onto the lawn below.

It wasn’t the slap: she’d been hit much harder by other men. It wasn’t even the humiliation of her expulsion from his home. It was the realization that his industrial empire meant more to Morgan McClintock than she did. And that she’d been foolish not to have gotten a signed financial arrangement with him in the first place.

They parted bitterly, for she truly had loved him—for a time. But the love had withered into a painful husk of resentment and regret. While they were together Anita had never looked at another man, not even Morgan’s handsome young son.

Morgan McClintock immediately found another mistress. A younger one.

Anita found an even richer man, an older one: Brian Halleck. And this time she married him.

THE EARTHVIEW RESTAURANT

Her last night in Selene, before she returned to Earth, Anita was invited to dinner at the Earthview restaurant by Douglas Stavenger and his wife.

Anita was delighted by the invitation, and pleasantly surprised by the restaurant. Most of Selene reminded Anita of Coober Pedy, the opal-mining town in South Australia that had been carved out of the multihued veins of opal, underground where the residents could escape the summer’s blistering heat. But where the opal-rich stone of Coober Pedy was bright and colorful, Selene was drab: the lunar rock was mostly shades of gray, and the endless corridors and chambers were dismally narrow, their ceilings depressingly low.

The Earthview restaurant was very different. It had started as a huge natural cave, but the residents of Selene had enlarged and improved it in every way. There were five tiers of tables, with winding rampways connecting them. The plastic tablecloths, manufactured from lunar raw materials, looked and felt like crisp white linen. Selene-made tableware and wineglasses sparkled on every table in the light of lamps designed to flicker like candles.

Human waiters in dark suits and squat little robot aides moved up and down the ramps with quiet efficiency. The smoothed rock walls supported sweeping flat screens that showed the view outside, on the floor of the giant ringwalled plain of Alphonsus: the stark barren grandeur of the pitted, dusty lunar surface with the gorgeous blue and white beauty of Earth hanging in the utterly black sky.

A dark-clad waiter led Anita to the table where Douglas Stavenger and his wife were already seated. Stavenger rose and introduced, “This is my wife, Edith. Edith, meet Anita Halleck.”

As Halleck took the chair the waiter was holding for her, she stared at blond, smiling Mrs. Stavenger and asked, “Aren’t you Edie Elgin, the newscaster?”

Edith’s smile brightened. “I used to be. Haven’t done much lately. I’m sort of retired. But it’s good to be recognized.”

“I’ve enjoyed the newscasts you’ve done from Selene.”

Douglas Stavenger asked, “How do you like the restaurant, Mrs. Halleck?”

“Please call me Anita.”

“Fine. And I’m Doug.” Pointing to his wife, Stavenger added, “But she’d prefer Edith. Edie is just for the news nets.”

“Very well, then,” said Anita. “Edith.”

“So what do you think of this place?” he asked again, full of youthful eagerness.

“It’s spectacular! I didn’t expect anything so … so … opulent.”

“It’s our one luxury here in Selene,” Stavenger said, grinning. Then he added, “Well, this and the swimming pool up in the Main Plaza.”

“I can see why people want to come up here after they’ve retired,” Halleck said.

“Too many of them,” Stavenger said, sobering. “More than we can handle.”

Edith said, “We’re building new living spaces for them, but there’s still lots more applying for residency than we can make room for.”

“They’re running away from the disasters back Earthside,” Stavenger muttered.

A human waiter took their orders, and their food and drinks were delivered by one of the little flat-topped robots that trundled nimbly among the tables.

“I understand you’ve been talking with Dr. Cardenas,” Stavenger prompted, between bites of his catfish filets.

“Yes,” said Halleck. “We’re going to see if her nanomachines can build the mirror segments we need.”

“For the big telescopes you’re gonna hang out in space,” Edith said.

Interferometer, Halleck corrected silently as she nodded at Mrs. Stavenger. But then she thought, Well, they actually are telescopes, aren’t they? We’ll simply be using them differently.

“Kris’s bugs will build your mirror,” said Stavenger. “She’s a wonder with nanotechnology.”

Halleck heard herself ask, “Doesn’t it worry you? Just a bit?”

“Worry? About nanomachines?”

“Yes. You’re a completely enclosed community here. If some of those nanobugs got loose, they could destroy everything, couldn’t they? Wipe you out. Kill everyone.”

Stavenger glanced at his wife before answering. Then, in very measured tones, he replied, “That is a possibility, of course. That’s why we’re very careful with nanomachines. We have very strict safeguards in place. The only time we’ve had any problems was when someone deliberately tried to kill people with nanomachines.”

“Your father was murdered by them, wasn’t he?” Halleck asked.

“My father was murdered by a madman who used nanomachines as the murder weapon, yes,” Stavenger said tightly.

Edith chimed in. “You might’s well say that guns kill people on Earth.”

“Well, they do, don’t they?”